Supercomputer Albert2's Woodcrest cores are hot-swappable

F1 RACING FANS posing as journalists were allowed to view Albert2, the latest supercomputer installed by the BMW Sauber team, today. At the event, its maker, Dalco, revealed that Albert's Intel processors are hot swappable.

The actual 'high performance cluster' (HPC) was built using Intel's Woodcrest dual-core processors - mainly because they were what was commercially available when the machine was conceived.

Franklin Dallman, vp of sales and marketing with Dalco, said that Intel Quad core processors remain pin compatible with the motherboards used.

And, because of the way the whole machine is built - it is feasible to hot swap all of Albert's 256 processors, one at a time.

The big question is - would it be worth it? Dallman effectively admitted that his company hasn't really tried swapping them yet. So he hasn't a clue as to whether his prince Albert would run twice as fast as a result. µ